


Marmalade Johansen and the Case of the Zombie Musicians or “Mind the Fourth Wall, You Might Not Like the Neighbors”

by LizaWithAZed



Category: Marmalade Johansen
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:47:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LizaWithAZed/pseuds/LizaWithAZed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marmalade and Penelope are in deadly danger again - but things are about to get even weirder than they're used to. Based on Tavia Morra's Comic for The Daily Texan, with a special crossover guest from a slightly better known comic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marmalade Johansen and the Case of the Zombie Musicians or “Mind the Fourth Wall, You Might Not Like the Neighbors”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tavia Morra](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Tavia+Morra).



> This actually came to me as an idea for a fan-comic, but then I remembered I can’t draw. (No really, I tried. I did try. But oh god, the results were not pretty.) So I decided to stick to what I know.
> 
> Here then, as far as I am aware, is the very first Marmalade Johansen fanfic.

Hard-boiled detective Marmalade Johansen stood, primed and ready for action, poised to open up a frothing pile of ungodly hurt on the mockeries of life menacing his girl-Friday, poor sweet helpless Penelope…

“I AM NOT HELPLESS, SWEET OR YOUR GIRL FRIDAY, YOU DEMENTED GOON!” the aforementioned Penelope shrieked indignantly, “and the only reason I’m poor is you keep swiping the rent money. NOW GET OUT FROM UNDER THAT TABLE AND HELP ME!!”

“It’s a desk!” Marmalade retorted - suddenly realizing he’d been narrating his thoughts aloud again - though he wasn’t really sure the flimsy plywood balanced precariously on top of two cinder-blocks properly qualified as a desk. “You seem to be doing fine, ma’am. I’d hate to throw off your groove!”

“You miserable coward! I am…uuurgh!” Penelope interrupted her tirade to grunt in disgust as one of the garishly-dressed undead glam-rockers shoved his decaying hand down her shirt front. “Buy me dinner first, Michael Jackson” she quipped before ripping the offending limb off and using it to beat his fellow zombie, who had the pencil-necked look of a keyboardist about him, about the head. “I am single-highhandedly fighting off an army…”

“Five guys isn’t an army. Even in Patagonia, that’s not an army.” Johansen muttered from under the desk.

“…an army of the undead,” Penelope continued unabated, “and you won’t even pick up that GUN and HELP ME!!”

“Gun??” Marmalade said, shocked, and stuck his head out from the leg-hole of the desk. “What gun?”

“On the _desk_ ,” Penelope said, exasperated, and used the dismembered limb of the lead singer to indicate it.

“Ha-HAH!” Marmalage pronounced triumphantly, snatching the gun off the desk and pointing it at the shambling five-piece jazz ensemble “stand back, delicate frail Penelope! I’ll handle this! For this is manly man work and - why is my gun not a gun?”

Penelope stared at Johansen in disbelief, but sure enough, the pearl handled revolver that had been on the desk was now a large wrought-iron skeleton key in Marmalade’s hand.

Penelope, having become long accustomed to the way reality worked - or failed to work – around Johansen, came to the obvious conclusion and yelled “WHAT DID YOU DO??”

“I didn’t do it! It was a gun when I picked it up! Jeez, this is weird, even for me. I mean I tend towards the surreal, but this is downright dadaist, and the narration can’t even keep what kind of band the zombies are straight, and…” He looked up in pure terror. “Oh _crap_.”

“What now?” Penelope snarled, neatly decapitating a DJ mix-master with her key-chain.

“I think I just broke the fourth wall,” Marmalade confessed in a terrified whisper. “Huh, I didn’t even know we _had_ one of those.”

“Oh stop your existential philandering and _give me that_ ” Penelope snarled, grabbing the key out of Marmalade’s hand before falling on the last of the Zombies with a feral scream and plunging the key into its eye. It fell to the ground, once again dead, and she posed over it triumphantly, flexing her arms.

“Yes, yes,” Marmalade said distractedly “very impressive, but we’re losing sight of the big picture, the important stuff.”

“Are you kidding me? I freaking SCHOOLED those losers! Fat lot of help you were.”

“The zombies, the inconsistency, the lack of definition in our surroundings, it all points to one thing…”

“And what’s that?” Penelope asked, unimpressed.

“Something…” and here Marmalade paused dramatically, “something is very wrong here.”

~~~

Meanwhile, very far away and yet not that far at all:

You are one of the top Problem Sleuths in the city. You stand in your office, though the fully-rendered luxurious wood paneling unnerves you somehow and makes you feel not-at-home. You feel incomplete, missing a vital component of your very being.

Also, for some reason there’s a portrait of James Joyce on the desk who keeps screaming about poop.

Something… something is very wrong here.

**Author's Note:**

> Marmalade Johansen is the property of Tavia Morra. Problem Sleuth is the property of Andrew Hussie. Both are used here entirely without permission but entirely with respect. This is for love, not for money.


End file.
